Film Noir

100 All-time Favorites

Into the shadows: From The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to Drive, 100 all-time favorite film noirs and neo-noirs Enter a world populated by private eyes, gangsters, psychopaths, and femmes fatales, where deception, lust, and betrayal run rampant. The first film-by-film photography book on film noir and neo-noir, this essential collection begins with the early genre influencers of German and French silent film, journeys through such seminal works such as Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Vertigo, and arrives at the present day via Chinatown, Pulp Fiction, Heat, and the recent cult favorite Drive.

Entries include posters, tons of rare stills, cast/crew details, quotes from the films and from critics, and analyses of the films. Film director, film noir scholar, and Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader provides the introduction to this feast of noir worship. Populated by the genre's most revered directors, like Hitchcock, Wilder, Welles, Polanski, Mann, and Scorsese, the book also pays homage to its iconic faces, including Mitchum, Bogart, Hayworth, Bergman, Grant, Bacall, Crawford, Nicholson, Pacino, and so many more.

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At the beginning, this book states that film noir is not a genre but a filmmaking style or movement. Then when reviewing favourites, it starts calling film noir a genre.

The problem is that this book has 27 authors who have different definitions for what a film noir is. IMHO, just because a picture has an element(s) of film noir does not mean that it is a film noir. There should be a new category, perhaps neo-noir. Some pictures should just be re-categorized as crime dramas, thrillers, melodramas or just science fiction.

I would rate "Film Noir: 100 All-Time Favorites" at no more than 3.0 stars.

As writer/director Paul Schrader ("Affliction," "Taxi Driver") writes in the introduction, "Film noir is not a genre." Coined by French critics, film nor was a period (generally 1941-1958), but also a style and attitude that has continued to influence filmmakers and has splintered off into neo-noir ("L.A. Confidential"), cyber-noir ("The Matrix"), sci-fi-noir ("Blade Runner"), and neon noir ("Miami Vice," "Drive"). This massive, lavishly illustrated book picks 100 representative films, starting with the German expressionist masterwork, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," and ending with the lushly violent "Drive." While there are plenty of stone-cold classics, some might question the inclusion of movies that are good, but not really noir ("The Passenger"), are bad, but not really noir ("Black Swan"), and have noir elements, but maybe don't belong in this book ("The Dark Night"). I think Hitchcock is over-represented and the Coens woefully underrepresented, esp. considering that "Blood Simple" is a quintessential and influential neo-noir. But isn't a book like this meant to start arguments? Taschen also put out an earlier, slimmer book on noir that deals more with thematic elements. Also see "Dark City" (the book) and "Somewhere in the Night."